Work
As late as the 1840s, and despite Friedrich Wöhler's synthesis of urea in 1828, some chemists still believed in the doctrine of vitalism, according to which a special life-force was necessary to create organic compounds. Kolbe developed the idea that organic compounds could be derived from inorganic ones, directly or indirectly, by substitution processes. He validated his theory by converting carbon disulfide, in several steps, to acetic acid (1843–45). Introducing a modified idea of structural radicals, he contributed to the establishment of structural theory. One of the more dramatic successes of his theory was his prediction of the existence of secondary and tertiary alcohols, a conjecture that was soon confirmed by the synthesis of these substances.
He worked on the electrolysis of the salts of fatty and other acids (Kolbe electrolysis) and prepared salicylic acid, a building block of aspirin in a process called Kolbe synthesis or Kolbe-Schmitt reaction. A certain method for the synthesis of nitriles is called the Kolbe nitrile synthesis.
Hermann Kolbe was the first person to use the word synthesis in the present day meaning.
With Edward Frankland he found that nitriles can be hydrolyzed to the corresponding acids.
Read more about this topic: Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
...
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)